(NewsNation) — For years, there have been arguments over how tomatoes should be classified — and now, there’s a new food fight starting.
As the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee creates its 2025 recommendations to the Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture, it is reviewing whether potatoes should still be classified as a vegetable.
The Wall Street Journal first reported last year that the committee may decide to start considering potatoes a grain — the same category that carbohydrates such as rice are in.
Kam Quarles, CEO of the National Potato Council, testified during a Sept. 12, 2023, hearing of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee that “potatoes are a vegetable.”
“While NPC is sensitive to individual needs and cultures, we urge the Committee to recognize a potato is not a grain. Potatoes are the most widely produced vegetable in the U.S.,” he said. “The suggestion to reclassify potatoes as a non-vegetable is not grounded in any scientific metric. Instead, it apparently involves arbitrary preferences of meal substitution.”
Should potatoes become classified differently, Quarles argued, it could “confuse customers, result in nutrient gaps and also decreased vegetable consumption.”
Those in the grain industry aren’t happy with the potential changes either.
A grains-industry coalition told the committee that making potatoes part of their group could “further exacerbate nutrient shortfalls.”
Potatoes can be rich in vitamins, minerals and fiber as well as the antioxidant vitamin C and potassium. They have fiber in their skin, which helps digestive health.
However, USDA data shows that a majority of potatoes sold in the United States are processed as “frozen, chipped, dehydrated or canned.” Many of the frozen products made from potatoes are french fries, the USDA wrote, while the share being eaten “fresh” is declining.
Katherine Balantekin, a dietitian and assistant professor in the University at Buffalo’s Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, told The Washington Post that Americans should eat a wide variety of veggies and reduce their intake of processed foods, though added potatoes themselves can be “super nutrient dense.”
“I don’t think any public health person would say that people wouldn’t benefit from eating fewer fried potatoes. It would be good to eat fewer of them,” she said. “But I think that doesn’t have anything to do with whether it’s a vegetable or not.”
First announced at the beginning of 2023, the USDA committee going over the 2025 guidelines is made up of 20 nationally recognized scientists, according to a news release.
“The recent White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health underscored the need to understand the science of nutrition and the role that social structures play when it comes to people eating healthy food,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a previous statement. “The advisory committee’s work will play an instrumental role in that effort, and in helping HHS and USDA improve the health and wellbeing of all Americans.”
